Re: CVS commit: pkgsrc

John Marino <netbsd%marino.st@localhost> writes:
> The point is some of us don't like using scroll lock to back up to see
> the description that unexpectedly scrolled off. 24 lines is generous;
> I'd personally limit it to 20.
I don't think the scroll lock issue is relevant, but I agree with the
notion that DESCR should be short. It's not meant to be documentation
for the package; it should describe the package well enough for someone
to figure out whether to investigate further or ignore it. It's very
much like an abstract of a paper. I find that a lot of DESCR content
is verbose and goofy, and reads like content-free marketing text.
So the real reason to be short is that you might want to e.g. read all
DESCR in geography to see what you want to play with. I think a
100-line DESCR (or even 50) is a bad one, and I haven't found an example
that justifies such verbosity.
So if a human is summarizing them (and esp. making them more
level-headed and useful), I think that's good.